Rioters Are NOT 'Scum'! They Are The Fatherless

Jonathan Bellamy comments

The destruction is shocking, the thieving violates us all, and the
lack of respect for authority shakes our confidence in our law and
order values.

Yet something else 'pained' me at least as much as the above: on many
news reports it was the number of times that these errant young people
were described as 'scum'.

Sure, fear causes people to react, and this word is a verbal
retaliation, but when we do, we create an 'us and them' polarization.
We disassociate ourselves from our youth as if 'they are not really
like us'. We want to deal with them as some sort of alien invasion
into our world, as some sort of foreign virus or infection that has
entered our body that we need to fight off.

Rubbish. Where do we think today's youth came from? Were they born as
different babies than you and I? Did they start off somehow as freaky
aberrations waiting to grow up into anarchic headcases?

Of course not. They were born into the world that our older
generations have shaped and developed. They are the consequence of the
values we have promoted and allowed.

Older generations should take most of the responsibility for the
condition of their children's generation.

Scripture declares: 'Train a child in the way it should go and when it
grows up it will not divert from the path'. What we are reaping today
is the manifestation of how our children have been 'trained'.

And the single most destructive effect on how many of our young people
have been brought up is that they have been fatherless!

The effect of fatherlessness is not just to be seen in the violent
behaviour, it is not just revealed in the absence of respect for the
authority of our Police, it is not just expressed through mindless
vandalism; the darkness also shouts loud in our teenage binge culture,
addictions, abortions, STDs, eating disorders, self harm, knife crime,
suicides.

Let me quote from a 2010 book called I Am Your Father, by Mark Stibbe,
which eerily predicts what we are now seeing:

'Britain's record on family breakdown is now the worst in Europe.
Three quarters of the households on social housing estates in the UK
are now headed by lone parents, usually mothers. Only 15% of
social-renting households are headed by a couple with children.
Nationwide, 15% of babies are currently born without a resident
biological father and approximately 7% are born with no registered
father on their birth certificate.

'The consequences for children are toxic. The centre for Social
Justice has collated the evidence and now conclusively demonstrated
that children who grow up without fathers, in a lone parent
environment, are 75% more likely to fail at school, 70% more likely to
be drug addicts, 50% more likely to develop an alcohol problem, 40 per
cent more likely to have serious problems with debt, and 35% more
likely to experience unemployment and a need for social welfare.
Fatherlessness is now reaping a whirlwind of destruction in UK
society. We should not be surprised to hear that there has in recent
years been a tripling of children murdering children, that 70% of
young offenders come from fatherless homes, that in 2008 11,000
children were treated for addiction to drugs and alcohol, that the UK
has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe, and that
it is also witnessing an unprecedented surge in street-gang membership
in its inner cities.

'Today the Centre for Social Justice is swimming against the tide of
political correctness and declaring we cannot go on tolerating
everything and anything. They are reminding us that "healthy marriages
build healthy families, and healthy families build healthy society".
Where marriage is undermined and fathers are absent, society slips
towards lawlessness and violence as children resort to gangs as an
alternative to family (as a place where they can belong and find value
and identity). Broken Britain is a very dark landscape indeed.'

It is hard to be a father. It takes character and maturity to teach
responsibility and bring discipline. And sadly for too long our high
minded, liberal, political correctness has given young fathers too
many excuses for their right to run from responsibility. To shy from
the courage and backbone required to be a committed partner and a
loving father.

So often however political correctness is Biblical incorrectness! It
takes time, but eventually the outcome of a society believing it knows
better than God, is that this society reaps the effects of its pride.

There is another scripture in the book of Malachi that declares the
importance of allowing the Spirit of God to 'turn the hearts of the
fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their
fathers'. It declares that if this does not happen then the land will
suffer a curse.

What we have seen on our streets in the last week is just the latest
in a long line of different manifestations over recent years of the
growing levels of brokenness that besets our younger generation.

No they are NOT scum! They are the product of the fatherless society
that we have created. And we will not see them restored until a Spirit
sweeps our nation to nurture, inspire, value and encourage fathers to
be fathers once again.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms.

About Jonathan Bellamy

Jonathan Bellamy is the CEO of Cross Rhythms. He presents the daily City Drive radio programme and is married to Heather.

Reader Comments

Posted by AbusedByMyDad in uk @ 10:38 on Nov 29 2012

You mention self-harm. Self-harm is more likely to be the
result of abuse rather than not having a father. Sometimes
the abuse may come from the father or by some other
caregiver. It can be verbal, emotional, witnessing violence
between parents, physical or sexual or bullying by other
children. I agree not having a father is terrible but what
about those of us whose dads abused us? Many of us self-harm
and are labelled with Complex PTSD or Borderline Personality

Jonathan Bellamy you should be in charge of this country, we
have all been made to think the rioters are bad people, i am
also very angry with this government for making it hard for
my dad and now making it hard for me and now there making it
hard for my son, all we ever wanted is to be with each other
and show some love for one another, free the rioters and put
David Cameroon in there because hies the one who has made 4
fathers commit suicide this year, there blood are on your
hands David Cameroon. People have got to stop listen to
everything they here on the news and media to stop being
brain washed, were the deaths of these fathers on the news?

Great discussion here. I do not agree with everyone here.
What I do though is respect their tone of discussion and
respect shown to others. Everyone on this thread is stating
their opinions in a respectful manner to all of the others.
I am pleased to have cyber met you all.

The one thing these people may have in common that is of
more significance than being "fatherless" (which is not the
proper term here - somewhere along the way a male
contributed sperm and helped create the child - so the child
DOES have a father) ... is that they were the product of
unplanned and almost certainly unwanted pregnancies. Men
who have gotten a female pregnant intentionally, do not tend
to then abandon the child and the woman. This could not be
clearer. My dad died when I was 5. Whenever the term
"single parent" is used these days (which is constantly), I
cringe. My mother was forced into that role. She and my
dad didn't will it into being by not marrying when she got
pregnant, or not aborting the child as an alternative, had
she been single and abandoned by the male who impregnated
her.

This is the problem I have with an anti-abortion stance
here. When unwanted, unplanned children are brought into
the world SO often by people totally unprepared emotionally,
financially, educationally, and maturity-wise - GUESS WHAT -
that child, statistically speaking, is not only going to be
a tragedy for the (often teenage) mother in that she will
interrupt or sometimes end her education and end up on the
dole vs becoming a productive member of society, but a
tragedy for society which ends up paying through it's taxes
for endless dole-ing, and worst of all, a tragedy for the
unwanted child to have been needlessly brought into being
before the woman was ready in and able, before she had a
stable relationship she could rely on etc., then the child
ends up living on these dangerous, gang and drug infested
housing estates! It's a tragedy all the way around, the
roots of which are that the child should not have been
brought into the world in the first place - no child should
be, before it's "parents" are truly "parents" and ready to
be so financially, maturity-wise, etc.

By this logic we do not take action by encouraging people to
not smoke or to wear seatbelts.

What we commonly deal with is increased risk as in the cases
above.

Is every person rioting fatherless - NO
Is every fatherless person rioting- NO

Are fatherless children at increased risk of involvement in
various degrees of antisocial behaviour - YES

Can the state stop all fatherlessness - NO

Can the state stop some fatherlessness - YES

Since there is a correlation between fatherlessness and anti
social behaviour should all possible actions should be taken
to mitigate the instances of fatherless children. (or
smoking or non use of seatbelts) -YES

You are correct, in my view Jonathan, and your observations
mirror that of Melanie Philips, in the Daily Mail. The
biblical principle of sowing and reaping have in these
recent riots, proven the negative aspect of the principal.
As the late Dr Derek Prince commented, over 10 years ago,
'the one of the main causes of the breakdown in society is
delinquent males'. Without positive father figures, and
role models, christain or non-christian, our moral compass
will be spinning out of control.
I endorse the assertion from Ms Philips, that moral values,
stemming from biblical principles need to be restored if we
are to make any progress towards a stable society.
May be we are reaching a point in Britain when, the silent
moral majority will raise their voice and say 'enough is
enough'.

Agree with much of what you say Jonathan, however, I have to
agree more with Ian Hughes comments, we all make choices and
in most cases know the right ones from the wrong. It was
well publicised that some of these rioters were from
well-to-do backgrounds and had a future some would 'envy'.

Yes, fatherless children are more vulnerable to slipping
into bad ways, but as described already, a constant growing
culture of indiscipline has more to answer for- being driven
by those who think discipline is a bygone word of the
Victorian era and has no place in the modern society.

At school if you did wrong you were punished - simple. At
home, you were sent up to your room and sat in solitary
silence to contemplate your actions. Now children can just
plug in there ipods or Xboxes etc and remain entertained in
thier moments of living room exile, a trait which if I am
honest, my own children subscibe too.

However, one is for sure, they have been well advised on
what is right and wrong and being bought up in a Christian
family teaches them values absent in most areas of modern
society.

Hal, I do not dispute the pattern, it is whether
fatherlessness is causal or correlational. I believe it is
more likely to be correlational than causal. Further, I do
not know, nor I'm sure do any of us have access to at
present, what the percentage of rioters came from fatherless
families. Statistics in themselves do not prove anything.
They lead us to areas to be investigated and we need to be
wary of drawing conclusions too early and without robust
analyses. Extreme racist organisations use simplistic
statistical 'evidence' to highlight their beliefs. For
example, if riots involve mainly black people, they conclude
that it is being black that is the cause. That is a
correlation, not a cause. Other factors are at work. I
believe the same to be the case here. Fatherlessness may
or may not be a feature of the rioters but it is by no means
clear that it is a cause.

Paul - Whilst I sympathise, I was never smacked as a child
but discipline was extremely firm. I never smacked my
three children but discipline was strict and they all grew
up to be well-balanced individuals. There are far more
effective ways to discipline that inflicting violence. If
we HAVE to resort to violence then we've clearly not tried
other, highly effective, methods. It is the lack of ANY
'other methods' that could well be an issue here. Not
imposing sanctions. Sanctions not followed through when
threatened etc. I've seen children smacked and
'disciplined' who go on to engage in criminal activity.
Those (like mine) who've not been smacked, going on to be
well-adjusted adults. We need to pray for wisdom.

Thank you Hal. I do not dispute that causal and
correlational 'can' be working in parallel, but I do get
concerned when an apparent cause is actually no more than
correlational. I do not know what the statistics are for
the rioters being 'fatherless', I'm not sure that, when the
original article was written, those facts were known, hence
my caution. I am willing to have my views challenged by
statistical facts backed by robust investigation but too
often, correlations have been used to suggest cause where
none exists. Rock and Roll was blamed for moral breakdown
as far back as the '50s. Cause or correlation? The
examples are many. I just have difficulty accepting that
it is fatherless that is the cause. I believe other social
factors are FAR more likely to be the triggers and
fatherless is yet one more consequence of those factors.
My work in Psychology and Counselling has never yet yielded
fatherlessness as a cause for inappropriate behaviour.
Chaotic lifestyles, abuse, poverty, social exclusion - yes,
but if I went down the route of fatherlessness I'd be
unlikely to identify the source of the problems, which are
usually FAR more complex. Fatherlessness, for me, would
perhaps, in certain limited circumstances, be one possible
indicator of problems to be further investigated.
Nevertheless, I think this a very useful discourse.

Correlation between a characteristic and an unwanted action
is a pretty clear indication of an issue requiring action.
As in most human interactions there is no one cause. What we
need to do as a society is look at correlational factors as
one of the causes of the action. To simply say correlational
is not causal is almost always a true statement.
correlational is however just a step on the road to finding
the one of the causes.
Fatherlessness is not "the" cause of societal ills" it is
merely one of the correlational factors which in aggregate
compromise the cause. causal and correlational are not
mutually exclusive.

Many people say you shouldn't smack a child , "Smacking is
violence they cry"
Clearly these young people have had no dicsipline or respect
in their lives and the lack of Smacking has led them to do
terible things like we have seen on the tv.
They need Discipline Love and Respect , all three go hand in
hand for a better society.

Keneth and Ian, I agree with the spirit of what you say. I
too know people who fall into the demographic which puts
them at risk and yet they prevail and prosper. I too know
people with every advantage who fail miserably.

That is not the point, of course we know these people the
statistics given allow for that. However when we see a
specific pattern it needs to be heeded.

Eg. Seatbelts save lives.. of course we have all heard
stories of people who died because they were wearing
seatbelts. Or someone who survived only because they had
their seatbelt off. Yes people have died and survived
against the odds but we still need to play the odds
correctly.